


too good a ship to wreck

by objectlesson



Category: Cars (Movies)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Daddy Kink, Established Relationship, Exhibitionism, Feigned Indifference, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Power Play, Praise Kink, Romance, Submissive Lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 13:25:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19132924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Los Angeles watches, or doesn't watch.





	too good a ship to wreck

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't angst but it's weirdly...melancholic? This is the story I was going to write after Get Hurt, but didn't. I wrote it now, though! 
> 
> Thank you so sincerely to those of you reading about the car loves of my car life.

Yes, and you always believed there was some kind of diamond in me  
Oh, but if you still burn every night in the hurt  
I know a place where the pain doesn't reach  
Come wander with me

\---

Lightning hates LA, so Doc tries to soothe the sting of racing in Irwindale by booking them a nice hotel in the city through the weekend. It’s got a roof-top pool, glass elevators, the lot. It’s not Doc’s scene, not by a long shot, but he likes the way Lightning’s face lights up when he first sees all of downtown glittering beneath them like Christmas. “What the fuck,” he says, kicking off his shoes and collapsing onto the bed. “A whole wall of windows? You better not use this as an excuse not to fuck me.” 

“There are blinds,” Doc tells him, making a show of drawing them, cloaking the city dark and sudden, turning back around and unzipping his windbreaker. “Afraid I ain’t so easy to discourage.” 

He grins his shit-eating grin, the one that makes Doc’s stomach coil up and drop like he’s fifty years younger, like he never stoped racing. 

—-

Once they’ve finished, Lightning pulls the drapes back, stands there with messy hair and a sweat-shiny back, wearing a hotel robe over nothing at all and gazing out upon LA while he holds a mini-bar bottle of rum. “Sky never gets black here,” he observes, gesturing loosely. “Makes me miss Radiator Springs. But mostly you.” 

Doc is still sprawled out on the bed under the sheet, staring at Lightning because it’s what he does, really, his best and dearest pastime. He’s forever stunned that the gold of this thing hasn’t turned to gold dust, hasn't become ash to be swept away by the Santa Ana winds. Lightning McQueen is still solid and valuable and shining in his palms, a real thing for him to kiss. He reaches out with a foot and knocks it clumsily into his thigh. “Good thing m’here, then. No point in missing me.” 

Lightning crawls back in bed, and Doc puts his hands under his robe, kisses him hard and tastes straight Barcadi. “Guess you’re right,” he says, mouth soft and wet, voice breathy. “Just always so fucking hungry for you, old man.” 

Doc is always hungry, too. So much he lives in a state of perpetual starvation, forever yearning for when he can have this impossible thing again, sugar melting on his tongue, Lightning McQueen’s hair sifting through tender fingers, cornsilk soft. “Look at at you,” he says instead of _come here_ , manhandling Lightning under him, pinning his shoulders down. He’s gotten good at passing off his hunger as exasperation, his desperation as tempered experience touching men right. “Looking to spoil your dinner, trying to have a go again. M’gonna cut you off.” 

Lightning flops back, pouts, an expression somehow as winning and effortlessly manipulative as his smile. Doc thumbs over it.

—-

They’re both like this, Doc _knows._

Still, he feels like it makes sense for a man like him to long for a man like Lightning McQueen. Young, new-penny boy hanging on his every word, navigating the world like he only just realized it was worth navigating, instead of leaving in a cloud of dust. Lightning McQueen, who manages, against all odds, to love Doc back, fierce and with wonder. 

Of _course_ Doc wants him bad and all the time, with his whole stupid old heart with its murmur and scars. 

So, he plays hard to get, sometimes. Just so he can fashion an illusion of power, since the real thing was stolen from him by age, by time spent longing and untouched. Lightning likes it, so it sticks. 

—-

There’s a long, angled rust-orange couch which takes up half their hotel room. Doc thinks it’s hideous but Lightning calls it classy, spreads out on it luxuriously after his showers and makes dark wet-spots with his hair while Doc waits for him in bed. 

It’s surprisingly comfortable, though. Doc likes to watch the news there in the morning, and read his papers in the afternoon when Lightning will disappear for hours at a time in the hotel gym, which is so fucking fancy Doc wants nothing to do with it. 

Their second to last day Lightning comes back with a towel draped around his neck and his shirt half-translucent in sweat, but before he showers he just stares for awhile, chewing his lip. “Fuck.” he says eventually, tossing the towel into the bathroom, where it lands in the sink, a perfect bull’s eye. 

Doc raises an eyebrow, pretending he doesn't feel the heat of his gaze, the way his eyes slice, smolder. It never fails to amuse him, amaze him. That he gets _checked out_ by this pretty boy, all fresh and gym-sweaty and delicious, too good to be true but true all the same. “What?” he finally says, chancing a glance at Lightning. 

“Just, you, like. In your clothes. All of them. You’re such a _grandpa,_ wearing like, fucking dress shoes and slacks and a goddamned _turtleneck_ while you just. What, read the paper? It’s hot. Makes me want to get on my knees for you, call you daddy, beg to suck your cock.” 

Every word cuts deeper and deeper, leaving Doc eviscerated, bleeding him out. His cock twitches in the aforementioned slacks and he crosses his legs, shifts his gaze back down to the paper so Lightning doesn't get to see the way he _wounds_ him, how blood seeps in to stain the blue of his eyes. “Lightning,” he sighs, making sure his voice comes out long-suffering. “It’s the middle of the day, the blinds are open, and you got a _race_ first thing tomorrow morning. “It can wait.” 

It can’t, it _wont._ They both know it, that’s part of the game.

Lightning whimpers and it makes the hair stand up on Doc’s neck. “How about—-what if I just, grind on your lap. Suck your fingers a little, you wouldn’t even have to—”

“Listen to yourself,” Doc rumbles, folding the paper down for the split second it takes to shoot a piercing look in Lightning’s direction, hold those eyes long enough it burns. “So fucking desperate. Don't you ever feel _ashamed_? Embarrassed that you can’t wait? Look at you, interrupting me reading the paper.” He sounds short but the two of them have done this enough times everything is coded, calculated. He’s given Lighting the go-ahead, and although he doesn’t look up, he _can feel_ the sweep of relief coursing over his face, softening him. 

Doc braces himself, fists crinkling newsprint. 

Lightning sinks to the ground, crawls across the floor on hands and knees with his head bent, the sight so perfect it takes Doc’s breath away as his gaze is inevitably drawn close. The way he moves sends spikes of awe into his chest; he gets to touch that, he _gets to touch that_.

“Just—let me suck your cock, then, please,” Lightning whispers, settling at Doc’s feet demurely, laying a flushed cheek against his knee. “I won’t bother you, won’t interrupt. Just, need something in my mouth Doc, please.” 

“Fine,” he grinds out, uncrossing his knee, clipping Lightning in the chin gently as he does it. “Can’t promise I’ll get hard for you, though.” 

Lightning grins so hard his cheeks must ache, eyes reduced to pretty blue slits as he licks his lips, settles down on his haunches in his obscene, sweaty shirt and presses his face gratefully between Doc’s legs. 

He just stays there for a minute or two, breathing. Inhalations are deep and yearning, eyes closed with the lashes fluttering against sweet golden skin and _fuck,_ Doc wants _bad_ to get a fist in that messy hair and haul him up into his lap, games be damned, paper be damned. But he grits his teeth and stares at the words until they become meaningless tear-bleary cipher and his eyes water, because there’s a certain sort of satisfaction, in this. Seeing how much Lightning McQueen will give him when he gives nothing in return. 

—-

Doc makes himself read. Sports statistics, some article about the a stadium being built in Orange County. None of it matters, it’s a facade. Something to do while he drinks in the feeling of bony shoulders pushing his thighs apart, breath coming in long and low and deep, coming out like fire. 

Eventually Lighting starts to kiss and mouth over the bulge of Doc’s half-hard cock in his pants, slow and lingering. It’s so _much._ The heat, the softness. His mouth is so fucking _good_ , even with layers of fabric bunched between it and skin, and Doc can’t fucking _believe_ he has a boy like this: a gorgeous, young, golden one who wants cock so bad he’ll press his face between an old man’s thighs and pray. Wants _Doc_ so bad he’ll forget about the whole of Los Angeles sprawling beneath them, just for a taste. “You forgot to draw the blinds,” Doc murmurs, reaching down idly and scrubbing his hand through Lightning’s hair, if only for a moment. “You gonna make a fool of yourself while the whole city watches?” 

“Mhm,” Lightning mumbles, opening his mouth wide and sucking needy and lewd before he pulls away panting, leaving a damp spot on Doc’s pants. “You gonna let me?” 

His lips are so pink, his eyes so hazy. Doc gets lost studying him a moment before returning to his paper. “Sure. Not like we’re close to the windows. Knock yourself out, kid.” 

Lighting whimpers and returns to his task, palming up Doc’s quads to his belt where his hands still on the buckle. “Can I?” he asks, exhalations coming hotter, faster. They’re bleeding through fabric and Doc is twitching under the heat, the soft-wet promise only inches, _moments away._ He says nothing, just parts his thighs wider, an invitation for Lightning to unbutton. 

He does, slow and reverent, fingers trembling. Doc can’t believe he has the power to make a boy’s hands shake, as if he were seismic, as if he contains all the thrills of a an earthquake, a race, a win, a _crash_. Lightning is special though, somehow moved by the same dangerous things Doc is.

“God, _fuck,”_ he murmurs as he unzips Doc’s fly and works his cock out carefully through his opened zipper, mouthing over the exposed skin sloppily. _“Thank you_ Daddy,” he whines, face crumpling. “Thank you.” 

—-

Doc’s not even hard, not all the way. Lightning usually likes it that way, though, the sensation of something swelling to fill his mouth, so he groans gratefully as he rubs the broken shape of his lips all over Doc’s length, the softest thing that exists in this universe. “Miss you,” he admits, face wrecked like he’s crying. “Doesn’t matter if you’re right here, miss you all the time.” 

It’s a confession, something one says in the dark to a priest before he asks forgiveness. Doc falters at the scrubbed-raw ruin of it and reaches down under the paper, cups a flushed cheek. “You’re too sweet for this world, baby boy,” he murmurs, pushing a thumb into the searing wet suck of his mouth. “It’s gonna chew you up, spit you out.” 

Lightning’s lips slide up over his knuckles and he’s letting go, save for the shining filament of spit keeping them connected, the gossamer dew between dawn and morning, winter and spring. “Not if you protect me,” he says then, before taking Doc into his mouth and sucking him down, mouth opening while his eyes close. 

“Fuck,” Doc curses, letting the paper fall to the wayside in one hand so he can tangle the other in salt-sticky hair, guide Lightning where he wants him. “I’ll protect you,” he promises, thumb at the corner of that stretched tight mouth. “You know I will. S’all I do.” 

“Mhmph” Lightning mumbles around his mouthful of cock, sucking hard, tongue wet and pressed tight to the underside. He fists in Doc’s pants, white-knuckled. “I know, Daddy.”

It’s easy for Doc to white out and lose sight of his goal, when Lightning’s touching him like this, sucking him like this, calling him _Daddy_ in this way that’s somehow tender and moving instead of pornographic, base. When any big-wig in a high-rise could take a break from his boring corporate job, look out the window, and see their favorite NASCAR driver on his knees, choking on cock. 

Doc knows they’d need binoculars to make any sense of it at all, but the mere _idea_ of being found out drives him crazy, touches him in the deep, shameful place where he wishes these sorts of things could be witnessed, so maybe he could believe they really happen. That he hasn’t dreamt Lightning McQueen and his begging mouth up. 

He fucks into it, chokes him enough he coughs and drools, spit bubbling out in an obscene froth that’s white against the navy of Doc’s pants. “Easy,” he murmurs as Lighting pulls off to gasp, lower lip swollen so much all he can think about it biting it, coming onto it. “Told me I wouldn’t have to do anything. Got me bucking.”

“Sorry,” Lightning hisses, laying his head back down to just _lick,_ like a kitten at a saucer of cream, tongue the prettiest slip of pink Doc’s ever dreamed of. He whimpers and kisses and Doc can’t help but lift his paper up to watch the spectacle under the bottom of it, moved something so perfect wants him _this bad._ His heart, with its murmurs and scars. 

“Good, baby?” he says, thumbing the shell of Lighting’s ear, loving how red he gets everywhere when he’s worked up. “You getting what you want?” 

“Yeah,” he says. Then he licks a wide strip up the length of him before fixing his lips around the crown to suck in needy pulses. He lets go, panting, eyes hazy and wandering like he’s drunk. “Love that you don’t give a fuck, that you’re just—reading, could care less about how bad I need you. Need your cock.” 

It’s a lie. Of course Doc cares, cares more than anyone has cared for anything in the whole history of the the world _,_ forLightning McQueen. For his greedy hot mouth. For the dark, crisp half-moon of his lashes against his pink cheeks. For the sounds he makes, the carpet-burns he gives himself on his knees. For the astounding candor and softness Doc found inside his ribcage after peeling back layers of muscle, cracking bones, driving over newly-paved roads enough times he wondered how someone could take such time with something he supposedly resented. “Maybe I’d care,” he coughs out, flipping a page in the paper. “If you tried a little harder, boy.” 

Lightning whimpers, spits so there’s a film of wet bubbling out over his lips. He never calls out Doc’s inconsistency, that he claims he wants less in some moments, more in others. He just follows his lead, does as he’s told. Now he’s choking himself to a sputtering mess on his cock again, sliding so deep he gags, hands all over Doc’s chest through the thick cotton of his turtleneck. 

Eventually they work their way down to grip his cock by the base. Lighting works on the head with his filthy red mouth, and at some point Doc forgets what he’s supposed to be doing, what he’s supposed to be playing for. That there’s a _reason_ he withholds affection from the only boy whose ever wanted it from him after they both finish. “Jesus, baby,” he groans, folding the paper up with trembling hands and setting it down on the couch beside him, the last semblance of order before he crumbles to this tide. “That’s so good. You always—always end up wrecking me anyway.” 

Lightning pulls off, gasping, coughing. “Fuck,” he whines, licking his lips, eyes so shot through with black the blue of them is only a memory. “I like it…like that you make me wait for it. Like that you last until it’s too good to stand.” 

_You make it too good to stand_ he wants to correct, but. He likes to fashion an illusion of power, since the real thing was stolen from him by age, by time spent longing and untouched. 

He’s touched, now. It’s an unbelievable thing, a gift, a miracle. Soft blonde hair soft gold skin a hands so unafraid, a boy that doesn’t care if the blinds are drawn or not, if the sun in LA which somehow seems closer than other suns is watching, or not. 

—-

Doc holds his curls in a fist and fucks his mouth hard, until there are tears streaming down Lightning’s face and his hand is fisted down the front of his gym shorts working so fast it’s blurry, even without the haze of tears over Doc’s eyes. “Get all your clothes off,” Doc orders breathlessly, letting go so Lightning can actually follow through. “Want you stripped, want you coming naked with my cock in your mouth.” 

He’s the one who feels exposed, though, as he lies there on the rust-orange couch in their hotel room as the sunlight streams through, painting Lightning in sharp brass ribbons as he pulls his shirt over his head, works his shorts over his pumping hips. He’s sweat-slick and shivery and both strong and small as he fits himself back where he was, this time bared so bright he’s bleeding as he swallows Doc down again, fisting his own cock. 

Doc is overheating, has to hook his fingers into his turtle neck and tug at it to provide some ventilation as Lightning McQueen humps his own hand to abandon right there. His moans get tighter and more desperate around his length, Lightning’s face redder and redder until he’s crying out, writhing on the floor of this expensive hotel room, the whole of him lost and flayed to ribbons over _nothing._ An old man’s cock in his mouth, an old man’s devastated eyes boring into the constellation of moles on his spine. “God, look at you, my perfect baby boy,” Doc chokes out as he watches Lightning make a mess of himself at the carpet, white spilling over his fist. “Miss you.” 

“Miss what?” Lightning asks after awhile, pulling off his cock in a filthy mouthful of spit, fingers still milking himself and coated in sticky white. “Miss my ass? Want to come in it? Where do you want to come?” he corrects himself in a slur, pressing his face back where it needs to be, Doc hot and thick against his cheek. “I’ll sit on if, it you want me too.” 

“Want to come on your pretty face,” Doc murmurs, taking himself in hand and pulling his cock in slow, self indulgent strokes, though he _does_ miss being inside him, always does. He drinks this in, though, drowns in the heady mess of it. 

His gaze covers miles upon miles. Lightning McQueen’s body, his forever tight shoulders and narrow waist and the sweet curve of his ass, which Doc is lucky enough to _have_ when he asks for it. “Just stay there, look up at me baby. Wanna cover you.” 

Lightning makes a wordless choking sound and arranges himself obediently, blinking up at Doc while he fists himself to finish. It’s easy to get there, when he _knows_ this is where it will land. Across needy flushed skin, his favorite person, a baptismal. Lightning whimpers when it hits him, shuddering, licking his lips even though most of it ends up on his eyelid, his chin, his cheek. Doc’s whole heart is static and he’s burning up in his clothes, but it’s _worth it,_ when they end like this. Lightning split along a seam and fractured, covered in come. Impossibility made flesh. 

Doc thumbs up the mess, feeds it to him. “One day, I’ll wake up,” he says, cupping Lightning’s newly cleaned face in two palms, pulling him up to kiss, their spit metallic and raw. “And you’ll go back to being some pipe dream I wished for drunk. Or on a birthday candle.” 

“Maybe,” he mumbles, collapsing between Doc’s legs, head pillowed on his stomach. “But even in like…whatever stupid universe that is you might wake up in—the bad timeline? I still want this. Still need it.” 

Doc’s eyes prickle, so he wipes them prematurely with the back of his hand. “I love you,” Doc grumbles, gently pulling a fistful of hair. “Come up. Let me hold—yeah,” he sighs, as Lightning clambers into his lap and settles against him. The couch sighs beneath their combined weight. 

“I used to hate LA,” Lightning murmurs, palming up over Doc’s heartbeat before he sneaks fingers into the band of his turtleneck. “Dunno if I can say that with the same confidence, now.” 

Doc has a hundred jabs stowed away, about the hotel room, how much he paid for it, how absurd the high-tech gym is. He stays silent on the issue, though, just palms up Lightning’s ribcage, counting the bones from memory, thinking how remarkable it is that he has a touch-memory of this boy’s bones, at all. “Yeah? I made it better?” he says instead. 

Lightning’s eyes are closed, his head now pressed to Doc’s heart, loving it not unbeknownst to or even in spite of but, most miraculously, _because of,_ its murmurs and scars. “All better.” 

The city glitters outside, blinding as it’s bathed in sun, but Doc isn’t thinking about that now, about the drapes, about the windows, about anything but this. 

 

 


End file.
